Plague The last dance – Carlos Adrián Serna

Plague - The last dance

“IN BED WE ARE BORN, FIND PLEASURE, SUFFER, DREAM, REST… AND DIE.”

Plague - The last dance

A work we created in 2017 alongside Hector Bolivar, a researcher and specialist in epidemics and infectious diseases at the Universidad de Miami, set to “The Urban” by the renowned composer Fredrick Kaufman, who actively contributed feedback to the work.

“Plague The last dance” is an instal-acción* that uses different visual techniques to let us see the body, its affliction and our own vulnerability as a society in parallel. The bed is the central element, a place of sickness and healing; it serves as an allegory through which to express the many transformations humanity undergoes in the face of the inevitable consequences of an epidemic. Physiological, emotional, religious, economic and social changes are only some of the dimensions affected.

Plague - The last dance

Throughout history, various epidemics and pandemics have been catastrophic for humanity. The scale of these biological catastrophes profoundly and permanently changed human structures. Art, particularly in its visual and literary forms, served as a means of psychological defence and reconciliation in the face of these epidemics.

“We rarely pay due attention to the important role the bed plays in our lives. We are born in one bed and die in another, and half our existence unfolds within it. The bed shelters our illnesses, is the nest of our dreams, the battlefield of love. It is our most intimate space, the primordial lair of the animal we carry inside us. For Frida Kahlo, the Mexican painter, the bed was all this and much more: a refuge, a torture rack, a sacred altar.”

Rosa Montero, Historias de mujeres, 1995. Frida Kahlo: EL mundo es una cama.